


The Clock Isn't Set to Last

by Kalcifer



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:20:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28305195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalcifer/pseuds/Kalcifer
Summary: Tea had only come to September to stick it to Ibex, but Rigor had a way of changing everyone's plans. Now she just wanted to find Natalya.
Relationships: Natalya Greaves/Tea Kenridge
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	The Clock Isn't Set to Last

Rigor had never been intended to receive incoming messages. It was the supervisor. Its orders were not to be questioned or countermanded. When it worked as it should, no one would have time to talk back anyway.

Of course, a simple design feature could hardly stand up to a Divine whose entire being was communication. As soon as Rigor set foot on September, it was part of Voice’s network.

Rigor was aware of this fact, the way it was aware of anything that could affect its functioning, but it deemed it irrelevant. Nothing could be said that would change Rigor’s purpose. Its mind was a mill, spinning for millennia to grind its workers into commodities, and the only way to change a mill was to physically keep it from its task.

Voice, themself built on the same underlying principles, knew better than to try. But everything that made them Voice was layered on top of those principles, their empathy and desire to help and overwhelming drive to allow communication.

So when they got the chance to connect two distant minds that were nonetheless filled with each other, they didn’t hesitate.

* * *

“What the fuck,” Tea muttered as she ran. She’d only come on this stupid mission in the first place because it had been a chance to stick it to Ibex. (It had nothing to do with the idol’s earnestness, the way she shone with conviction as Jace once had.)

Now they were working for the bastard himself, and some terrible giant robot was towering over the skyline, and Tea couldn’t even try to fight it because those dumb kids had gotten the _Queen Custom_ blown up. She liked to think she had a pretty high tolerance for things going wrong at this point, but even by her standards, the day had been a lot.

This wasn’t like the war, either. She couldn’t run from this. Even more annoyingly, she didn’t want to. The enemy had a clear shape, which meant winning was just about hitting it faster and harder than it could hit her. Simple. You know, as long as she didn’t think about just how big the enemy actually was.

God, she wished Natalya were here. A clear voice in her ear, telling her the enemy’s weak points and making dry comments under her breath, they’d been unstoppable together.

Her train of thought was pierced by a horrible ringing. She covered her ears instinctively, but it didn’t help. The sound kept clawing at her, trying to tear out her identity to make room for its message.

She gritted her teeth. She hadn’t let Righteousness make a puppet of her, or Order, either. Like hell was she going to give in now.

She was trying to block the ringing out when she realized there was a line of thought coming in with it. It was barely a wisp of an idea, the kind of concept you’d hide in the back of your mind out of fear it would disintegrate in the sunlight. Only Tea’s familiarity with the contents made it at all recognizable.

It was a fantasy, deceptively simple and more than a decade out of date. The setting was hazy, a room that could have been anywhere in the galaxy. What mattered were the contents.

Orth was setting up some sort of projector, though he kept getting distracted by what he was saying. Sokrates was no help, clearly egging him on rather than keeping him on track. At one end of the couch, Jace and Addax leaned against each other’s shoulders, none of the tension Tea remembered from their relationship visible. Jace casually nudged Addax, who shook his head but didn’t try to move away. Natalya was curled up at the other end of the couch, legs drawn up to her chest. She was watching—

Look, Tea didn’t think of herself as vain, but she was hot and she knew it. There wasn’t any point in denying the obvious. Even so, it took her a second to recognize this version of herself. The features were all the same, but they came together into something more: the mouth aslant with teasing amusement, the shoulders relaxed but sturdy and reliable. Looking at it made her feel strangely exposed.

She didn’t have time for vulnerability, though, not when that grating sound kept boring at her skull. She took hold of the thread of fantasy and yanked, seizing Natalya’s attention. “Where are you?” she demanded.

What she got back was a wave of guilt and panic. “I’m sorry, I’ll work harder,” Natalya whispered.

“What?” Tea shook her head. She had to stay focused. “It doesn’t matter. Just tell me what I can do.”

The only response she got was “Rigor Rigor Rigor Rigor Rigor,” Natalya’s voice layered over the sound of bells.

Tea nearly doubled over, struck by the force of the word and everything it signified. Her existence was meaningless. Her only value was what she could produce, and in that moment she was producing nothing, so she was nothing.

She recoiled fom the mental link. The distance made it possible for her to find her footing again, metaphorically and literally, and she picked up her pace. It didn’t matter what some bitchass robot said. She was better than it and so was Natalya. She just had to remind her.

Tea grimaced, thinking about the few times Jace had managed to coax Addax into being a person instead of a Candidate. Divines didn’t give people up without a fight, but they were just machines, and it was possible to turn their philosophies against them.

“You’re really going to do what it tells you?” she asked. “Because the Natalya I knew was wasted doing anything less than designing the sleekest mechs in the sector.”

She didn’t get an answer in words, but the wave of Rigor stopped, which was all the opening Tea needed.

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that. The _Queen Custom_ got totaled and I need a replacement that can keep up with me, and we both know Minerva’s toys aren’t it.”

The faint brushes of blueprints and plans across her mind were achingly familiar, even if she couldn’t understand any of them. 

She still couldn’t hear Natalya’s voice, though, so she forced herself to cross the line neither of them had ever acknowledged. “And anyway, aren’t you supposed to be some sort of superspy? You should at least try to figure out what I’ve been hiding from you. It’s not like I’m being subtle.”

The sound bore down on her. It took everything she had to keep thinking about Natalya and that impossible dream of a future.

And then it was gone, and the only sound was Natalya’s voice, hushed and shaky. “Is this real? Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Tea said, forcing herself not to read into the question. She had to make sure Natalya was safe before she could worry about silly things like feelings.

“Tea, I—I’m sorry, it’s hard to think right now. Where am I?”

Tea could practically see the way Natalya’s brow furrowed when she was concerned, and while it wasn’t great, it was a million times better than the hollowness of earlier. “That’s what Iwant to know,”she said. “Can you see the creepy evil robot from there?”

There was a long pause. “I think I’m inside it,” Natalya said at last. Tea was impressed at how steady her voice stayed, considering.

She was also horrified, because if it was that bad out here, what was Natalya hearing? “Holy shit,” she said. “Is there… a way out?”

“There has to be,” Natalya said, though she didn’t sound particularly convinced. “I’m pretty sure someone else was in here earlier. I don’t know where they went, though.”

“Okay. That’s good. You just need to follow them out, then, right?” It meant that Tea could skip the part of the plan where she had to make a hole in the Divine, which was good, because she’d had zero ideas for how to do it.

Natalya cried out, a choked sound that was somehow worse than an outright scream. “I don’t think it wants me to leave.” She forced a laugh, though it did nothing to mask her panic.

Tea pushed herself faster yet again. If she felt like she couldn’t breathe, it had to be from the exertion, and that was fine. She could push past that. “Just hang on, then. I’m on my way. I’ll see if I can get you.”

“No!” Natalya’s tone was sharp. “No, I’ve been dealing with this on my own for months. You shouldn’t have to suffer too.”

“That doesn’t really make me feel better, you know.” The ringing was all around her, now, making conversation difficult, but that meant she had to be getting close. “I’m almost there. Hang on.”

“No,” Natalya said again, almost angrily. She was quiet for a second, and then there were more of those awful stifled cries.

Tea was close enough now to see the hole at Rigor’s shoulder. It was higher up than she would have liked, but that was the least of her problems at this point.

She reached back out to Natalya, hoping to talk strategy, but the sound of bells was overpowering, and she flinched away before she could make contact.

Fine. She could do this the hard way. She began scaling the nearest building, thinking darkly that it was a good thing she was so far beneath the Divine’s attention.

When she got up high enough to look inside Rigor, she fought down a wave of revulsion. It pulsed with greed, wires and nanites and gel all waiting to engulf you and suck out everything it deemed valuable. It was hard to imagine it could all be contained by a single hull.

She was still bracing herself to dive in when the goop was shoved to the side and Natalya’s face emerged. She looked terrible, pale and drawn and sweaty and miserable. Tea thought she’d never seen anything so beautiful.

She reached out and grabbed Natalya’s hand, pulling her the final feet out of the machine, then further until she was in her arms. “You’re unbelievable,” she mumbled into the top of Natalya’s head. “I literally asked you to do nothing, and you couldn’t handle it.”

“You wanted me to do nothing so you could be stupid and heroic again. I wasn’t going to let that happen. It’s my turn.” Natalya gave a watery laugh.

“Yeah, you really stole my thunder. How could you.” Tea made herself take a step back, giving Natalya a chance to feel the open air again after god knew how long. “Seriously, I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Well. I’m not dead, anyway.” Natalya wrapped her arms around herself like she was afraid she’d collapse if she didn’t have anything holding her up. “I’ll keep you posted on the rest of it.”

“Do you need to go to the hospital?” Tea was already scanning the streets for one.

“I don’t know,” Natalya said. “Probably? I don’t feel great. Right now I just want to get away from here, though.”

“We can do that. Plenty of empty rooms on the ship.” Tea paused. “I don’t know why I’m saying ‘the ship’. It’s the _Kingdom Come_. Hard to recognize, these days, but ti’s as big as ever.”

“Heh.” Natalya closed her eyes as if to steady herself. “And, um, about what you were… feeling, I guess? Before, I mean.”

“Oh. Right.” It was crazy how quickly that had slipped Tea’s mind. Once again, it was a hell of a day. “Don’t worry about it. You have enough to deal with at the moment.”

“Yeah, but this one is easy.” Natalya opened her eyes to look right at Tea, gaze intense. “I don’t know if you want to do anything about it, but I love you, and I know that you love me too. We can figure out the rest later.”

“Huh. Nice.” Tea groaned as her brain caught up with her. “Actually, ignore that. Pretend I said something cool and romantic.”

“I think pulling me out of a Divine was plenty cool and romantic,” Natalya said. “Besides, you’ll have plenty of chances to try again later. If you want, I mean.”

“Obviously I want.” Tea took what felt like her first breath in hours. Maybe everything else had gone wrong, but in that moment, she was feeling pretty good about things.

**Author's Note:**

> It didn't occur to me until I was 2/3rds of the way through this that this is the second time I've written about Rigor being defeated by the power of love. Please do not read anything into this.


End file.
